The Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland launched a new initiative at Edinburgh Zoo today (Tuesday 11 October 2011) by taking her place in a new representation of the primate family tree.

Professor Anne Glover took part in a new ‘living mural’ when she visited ‘Living Links to Human Evolution’, a primate research centre run by scientists at the University of St Andrews.

The new mural installed at the Centre, with the help of the Wellcome Trust, was created to engage the public with scientific research. It is hoped that visitors from all over the world will interact with the display while learning more about our evolutionary past.

St Andrews’ Professor Andrew Whiten, who is also Scientific Director of Living Links explained, “My Primate Family Tree is a wonderful artistic portrayal of our primate family tree that shows a few representative monkeys and apes, with a space where visitors can pose in the correct evolutionary place for a human, next to our closest relative, the chimpanzee.

“We are encouraging all visitors to photograph each other here. We hope this image will become well known in Scotland and beyond and help people take away the message that we are primates and these monkeys and apes are our closest living relatives. They are ‘living links’ to our evolutionary past, and we can learn much about ourselves from them”.

Dee Masters, Budongo Trail & Living Links Team Leader at Edinburgh Zoo, added, “The idea of My Primate Family Tree at Edinburgh Zoo’s Living Links to show how we as humans fit into the primate family and the evolutionary process is fantastic, not only that, the mural is a beautifully painted piece of artwork and a great addition to the Zoo.”